Knee-jerk silliness over Walmart

While in California last week, President Barack Obama stopped at a Walmart in Mountain View to promote the company’s new program on energy efficiency. Seems like a good thing, right? Everybody’s all for energy efficiency, right? Ah, but lest you forget, Walmart is the company that so many Democrats love to hate because, they say, it’s a nonunion shop that offers substandard wages and benefits.

“MY President is coming to CA & is highlighting Wal-Mart? I guess that shows his commitment to workers,” Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, a former labor leader, snarled on Twitter. “Disappointed is an understatement.”

So, the president can’t praise a company when it does something good? A company that, by the way, also gives work to 1.5 million Americans? That’s just knee-jerk silliness.

It’s worth noting that this was not the first time this administration has touted Walmart. Last year, first lady Michelle Obama praised the company for its plan to hire more veterans. Was Assemblywoman Gonzalez disappointed in that, too? Probably. But we’re not.